The Gospel
At the Gospel Service, the Gospel, good news of forgiveness through the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is preached every Sunday Evening.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
This is probably the best known verse in the Bible, being found in John’s Gospel chapter 3, verse 16. Some have called it “the gospel in a nutshell” and it certainly does summarise the Christian message quite nicely.
God has many attributes, and one of them is Love. God loves us, His creation. We are not the subjects on an impartial, emotionless scientific experiment, but God places a great value on each and every man, woman and child, so much so that he would send His Son Jesus to so that they might not perish.
Perish? Well, another attribute of God is His Holiness. The Bible records how creation was perfect at the start, but then Eve was deceived and Adam sinned by deliberately choosing to disobey God. Sin? It means missing the mark or target, and that target is perfection, or the Holiness of God. The perfection of creation was ruined and this has led to the mess we have in the world today.
If God was an impartial, emotionless scientist running an experiment, He would have scrapped the experiment, disinfected everything, and started again. But as God is Love, He didn’t, although the Bible tells us that He came very close to wiping out the human race in the flood, except for those he kept safe because of their faith in Him.
So if God is Love, why doesn’t He just forgive and forget all the bad stuff? God is also a just God. This means in His justice faith is always rewarded, evil is always punished. The wages of sin is death, says the Bible. The gift of God is eternal life. So all these people who are doing bad stuff and appearing to get away with it? Well, when they die they will have to face a Holy God who is angry with them, and they will receive what they have earned in full, separation from God forever in a place called Hell. That’s perishing.
So all you have to do is live a good life and you will have this eternal life?
No, that’s not what the Bible says. It teaches that this sin, this lack of perfection and holiness, is in everyone. Because of this contamination, nobody on the planet is good enough for God, nobody qualifies for eternal life and everyone deserves the wages of sin.
So God sent His Son Jesus Christ down to His creation, the creator living as one of his creation yet still the Creator, yet living a perfect, sinless, holy life, doing what His creation could not do. He healed the sick, made the blind see and told people how they could live to please God and not the man-made religious rules that were crushing them. But they didn’t like this and had Him executed. But He was raised from the dead three days later.
But this was part of God’s plan; Christ became a perfect sacrifice to bear the wages of sin for everyone, past, present and future. Eternal life is a gift from God.
Like all gifts, you have to receive it, and you only receive and open a gift if you know you want it. If you know that your life is displeasing to God and you want to change it around to please Him, then you know you want the gift. How do you receive the gift? By believing that Jesus Christ died to take away the penalty for your sins. That is what “believes on Him” means in John 3 v 16.
Why not come along to our meetings to listen to this important message of the gospel.
Alternatively, why not listen to or download The Gospel, a recording of a Gospel Message. To download, press the right mouse button and use the “save as” function to download to your PC. It is in 32kbps MP3 format and will play on any PC audio software. It is 7.6MB in size and plays for a shade under 32 minutes.
The file is Copyright Mr Phil Coulson / Church Street Gospel Hall, but may be distributed freely. Commercial use is not allowed.